Welsh Assembly phoney consumer website

Greenwash and spin? In Wales the Welsh Assembly Government have set up at great cost a Phoney 'consumer' web site Waste Awarenss Lies Wales to promote incineration. "Wales says burn don’t bury our rubbish" Why is Jane Davidson pretending to be 'green'?
Burning is not an option. Burning is not a sustainable or environmental friendly option For a  a just, toxic-free world without incineration click here 

WAG offering bribes to councils

Cllr Mrs Anne Blackman "WAG is just offering bribes to councils to do what WAG in its blinkered vision wants them to do, such as in the case of Project Gwyrdd. (project incinerator) Offering the councils in the scheme a hefty £9.25mln each year over the 25 year Contract. Totalling approx £230mln. WAG must think money grows on trees.
I would like to get in touch with more people who think like me, but I regret to say WAG is not allowing such debate and investigation to take place. " anneblackman@caerphilly.gov.uk
Anne Blackman, who represents part of the Nelson ward, recently resigned from the Liberal Democrat Party

Jane Davidson Lies and Greenwash

Wales says burn don’t bury our rubbish - No it MUSTN'T

Bury or burn is a false debate - Real recycling is the only true way forward.
Why do have we a whole organisation with website funded by WAG to promote  misinformation?

Burning/Incineration is not 'sustainable'
 
The European Union has a waste hierarchy which goes like this.
First reduce. Then re-use. Recycle next. And if you absolutely have to, then incinerate or dump. Wales now has one too and it is legally binding not a 'guide' as Waste Awarenss Lies Wales  tells you.
Most countries heed it well - with Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands recycling 60% of their waste. The UK has a plastics recycling rate of only 3%. In Germany the recycling rate for plastic is 70%.

Wales this week agreed a statutory recycling target of 70% by 2024/25 (see letsrecycle.com story) but councils are using phoney figures  to up their recycling rates. Cardiff has a comingled collection for recycling and quotes those  figures claiming that is the amount recycled. However it omits to mention the high volume of the 'recycling' collection that is of poor quality.  Recycling collection must result in materials of sufficiently high quality to be recycled.  And shamefully Cardiff Council collects 'bulk' rubbish  from homes and sends it all to landfill. Jane Davidson lab AM minister for rubbish does not unfortunately 'intend to issue any guidance on the type or methodology of collection in the future' (more here)

More jobs less  waste Number of potential new recycling jobs Wales 2617 says

FOE report on Recycling and Reuse versus Landfill and Incineration Jobs

The economic and employment benefits associated with sorting, reprocessing and recycling, in comparison to incineration or disposal to landfill, have been highlighted by a number of studies from the US (CASCADIA, 2009) and in the UK (Gray,2002; WRAP, 2006; WRAP, 2009).

Although landfilling and incineration still involve larger volumes, recycling now

generates more than twice the revenue of the waste management industry because recycling recovers greater economic value bound up in discarded products and equipment.

Per tonne of material processed, recycling provides approximately ten times more jobs than landfilling and incineration.

Incinerators only actually burn about 70% of what is put in.

The remaining 30% - some of which is highly toxic ash - has to be, you guessed it... buried

Up in smoke: why Friends of the Earth opposes incineration,

more info here in Friends of the Earth 2007,

None of this information is on the phoney 'consumer' web site  Waste Awarenss Lies Wales 

funded by WAG. Partners are Environment Agency Wales..

Questions to WAG over INCINERATOR funding

Dear Mr Roberts,
Under the Capital Access Fund, you awarded Prosiect Gwyrdd Incinerator 70% of costs up to £200k for each of 2007 and 2008 (there was presumably slippage to 2008-09). In the Accounts it says
“2.3 In addition, it should be noted that the expenditure incurred during the initial accounting period (prior to the Joint Committee being established) was funded fully from WAG Grant. "
Could you therefore explain whether the 70% fraction was waived at any stage?
Secondly, the accounts show a big jump in WAG grant in 2009, with £482 772 attributed to the year, which contributed to a big surplus. Would you please disclose an audit trail relating to the awarding of this new or additional grant, including documents on the terms/application for it plus papers in the approval process?
Note
Bid info from bid-information when they first announced Regional Capital Access Funding for waste projects, which required Councils join the consortia and couldn't cover MBT that was deemed to be a part
solution. As they pretended incinerators don't produce toxic ash needing landfill, they were defined
as acceptable for RCAF.
UKWIN on Wales Waste Strategy 2009-2050.

Cardiff Council payment to consultants for P Gwyrdd/project incinerator

According to PGwyrdd's accounts for 2009/10, at http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/prosiectgwyrdd/english/news.html,

the Project Manager (Tara King) had a salary in the range £70-75 000.

Is this high?  Nick Robinson's programme on BBC radio 4 reported that only 10% of public sector workers get over £50 000.  A salary of over £60 000 is exceptional in public service.  A nice earner for exceptional 'Rubbish' Tara!

Of course, she had to manage contracts for highly paid consultants, which totalled far over budget at almost £230 000 (below). She did this from the budget for "supplies and services" of £161 000, adjusted to £191 000, but was still £96 000 overspent. And a further £82 000 payments owing were deferred to the current year.  Evidently Tara was very successful as Project Manager.

The payments to consultants in the year were (with payments deferred to the current year shown in [...])

1. Parson Brinkerhoff – Technical Advisors = £86,488 [£56 847]
2. Pinsent Masons – Legal Advisors = £83,788 [£13 497]
3. Grant Thornton – Financial Advisors = £59,705   [£11 976] 
   Total Advisors = £229,981

Has any Cardiff Cllr anked why should Cdf increase contribution to P Gwyrdd

Has any Cllr anked why should Cdf increase contribution to P Gwyrdd 
(LAs increased by 50% below) when they didn't need it and made a surplus of £600k instead of budget of zero?

Prosiect Gwyrdd
Table 2a: Income & Expenditure Account (31st July to 31st March 2010)
Original Revised Actual Variance
Budget £ Budget £ £ 
Expenditure
374,564 Employees 292,229 197,449 (94,780)
27,500 Premises 27,500 7,683 (19,817)
7,491 Transport 6,941 2,460 (4,481)
161,267 Supplies & Services 191,056 287,323 96,267
0 Support Services 0 6,265 6,265
570,822 517,726 501,180 (16,546)
Income
(139,655) WAG Grant (106,827) (482,772) (375,945)
(431,167) LA Contributions (410,899) (626,963) (216,064)
(570,822) (517,726) (1,109,735) (592,009)
0 Total 0 (608,555) 608,555

How many more incinerators can they fit in Wales?

The WAG Sustainability Committee meets today 
The Environment Agency says "Our view: there should be a clearer process in place for the siting of major infrastructure such as energy, so that environmental and climate change outcomes are maximised. For example, we are aware that the Regional Waste Groups have tried to facilitate a more strategic approach through developing the Regional Waste Plans but this was carried out in isolation of other critical infrastructure needs. This means that opportunities for energy from waste and combined heat and power have potentially been missed."

How many more incinerators can they fit in Wales?
Viridor type incinerators are NOT energy from waste 

It starves recycling industries of raw materials and prevents a cheaper, greener business model from succeeding.

The welsh assembly gov and local councils under pressure to reduce landfill are
opting for incineration of waste under the pretext that they can make electricity from the process! 

This is Waste incineration disguised as 'renewable energy'!!

We know the electricity from one of these large incinerators is pretty small, 20 or 30MW, compared with normal power stations (several 100MW up to Aberthaw’s 1450MW) and produces toxic ash and air pollution.They set no requirement on energy efficiency, despite Welsh strategy on 60% minimum. 

Can WAG justify, a guarantee of £9 million per year to this waste incineration project while 

telling us they are GREEN? 
Can  Jane Davidson justify an INCREASE incineration to 30%!!!  

Various mechanical and bio-treatments (MBT) are roughly half the cost of incinerators, but WAG’s officials were so set on incineration that they approved the £9 million/year despite adopted policy to minimise waste disposal by landfill and incineration.

Prosiect Gwyrdd is NOT  Green! The partnership is not to "recycle and compost" but to dispose of the "residuals" by unwanted incinerators at huge cost.  

Shift away from EfW incinerators

Four planned energy from waste (EfW) incinerators are to be reviewed pending decisions on whether they will go ahead at all, pointing towards a shift away from incineration as a method of waste treatment. Spiralling costs and a dramatic reduction in residual waste arisings have put a question mark over the plans to build EfW facilities in Hull, Coventry and Leeds.

The planning committee of Bristol City Council has made a decision to block an application for a 350,000 tonne a year energy-from-waste (EfW) facility proposed by Viridor.

Targets 

False to say no policy change from Wise About Waste, which said minimise disposal to landfill and incineration. This plan says reduce landfill to 5% and expand incineration up to a level of 30% - it's dishonest of WAG to pretend no policy change. 

Targets set by the Welsh Assembly Government which is to recycle 52% of our waste by 2012-2013 - just not ambitious enough to claim they are pursuing a carbon lite sustainable policy!

Putting off 70% recycling till 2025 means going slow on recycling, when some countries (Falmand/Berlgium) and municipalities have already reached this level

FOE Cymru proposed 70% by 2015 and 80% by 2020 are very feasible.

WAG claims that "a minimum level of 70 per cent recycling would be the most cost effective and deliverable level", but 'deliverable' means the dodgy deal with fractious Local Authorities in December 2008.  Over 80% recycling would be cost effective and the best way of reducing greenhouse gases